Curve Balls on Turkey-day

I trust everyone had a great Thanksgiving. Although we have had lots going on, we had a thankful day on Thursday with good thanksgiving food. I had a very good morning, feeling better than the day before and my overall energy is getting better everyday. Although I have been feeling good, I have been monitoring my temp as the dr. was very specific that if my temp reached 101, I should head the emergency room because my body cannot fight the infections. So, I was checking it pretty close and finally around 5:30pm, it reached 101. I could not believe it. We did not want to go to the emergency room, but felt that since this is our first round we should not take any chances.

So, here we were, 6pm Thanksgiving night, heading to the emergency room near our home in Fort Worth. When we arrived, the quickly accepted us and took my vitals. As "murphy's law" would have it, they recorded my temp at only 99.5 (more on that later). However, they still wanted to run some tests, one of which was a scan of my head as I had been complaining about sever headaches both Wed and Thur (although Thurs was much less sever). I had assumed all along that this was a result of chemo.

We sat in the exam room for several hours as they ran several tests and about 9pm the Dr. returned to tell us my head scan revealed some strange results. My frontal lobe had some inflammation which was not normal and they recommended I get an MRI to verify what the issue was. The rub on this suggestion was they wanted to admit me into the hospital overnight so they could get it done first thing in the morning (Friday). We protested this suggestion but felt we should go ahead and get it done just to make sure.

During this time I just could not believe this was happening as this was yet another thing we might potentially deal with. It was 10:45pm before they could get us into a room at Harris Southwest and 11pm before we were settled. We did not have any time to call people and let them know what was going on because it was so late and we really wanted the MRI results before we really moved forward.

The next day (Friday), I had my MRI and by 12pm the doctor was giving us the results. The MRI did not show any additional tumor or anything life threatening at this point. Praise God! He did say this inflammation could have been a result of my chemo the few days before, but to make sure, they will monitor and I should have a follow-up MRI in about 5 days. We were then allowed to exit the hospital and be on our way.

This has been an amazing 24 hours. We left the hospital around 2pm and proceeded to go home and pack our bags for Houston. We are currently in-route to Houston for my appts Sat & Sun and should be returning early afternoon on Sunday.

As a side note, we discovered our Thermometers at home are inaccurate. They were registering at least 1.5 degrees too high. As it turns out, I did not have a high fever (which is 101) on Thursday, and really did not have to go to the ER. I now have an accurate understanding of the temps on my thermometers, so we will be better prepared next time. I still believe all things happen for a reason and God had a reason for me to do this little test at the ER and the MRI (still figuring that one out). I am continuing to stay positive that I am going to recover from this and it is just the process that I have to take one day at a time.

Take care....

(go Aggies on Friday)...